Bengo’s Latest News Clips 2015.06.29
- Greek Debt Crisis Intensifies as Extension Request Is Denied
The New York Times JUNE 27, 2015
People lined up Saturday at an Athens bank. Eurozone finance ministers met in Brussels, trying to salvage a Greek bailout plan.
BRUSSELS — Europe’s long standoff over Greece’s debt moved into an unpredictable stage on Sunday, with tensions reaching their highest levels yet and the risk growing rapidly that Greececould crash out of the European currency.
On Saturday, eurozone finance ministers meeting in Brussels rejected Greece’s request to extend its existing bailout program past a Tuesday deadline. Greece wanted the extension so it could hold a national referendum on July 5 to let voters decide whether the country should accept bailout aid under terms that the government of Prime MinisterAlexis Tsipras bitterly opposes.
Then, early Sunday morning, lawmakers in Athens voted to go forward with the referendum, after a day on which many Greeks lined up at cash machines to withdraw money from banks out of concern that a fresh financial crisis could be at hand.
Addressing Parliament before the vote, Mr. Tsipras defended his decision to call a plebiscite, saying it would “honor the sovereignty of our people,” and called on Greeks to say a “big ‘no’ to the ultimatum,” referring to the creditors’ proposal for a deal. He added that his government would “respect the outcome, whatever it is.”
After five months of grinding negotiations, Mr. Tsipras’s surprise referendum gambit — announced early Saturday morning on national television while many ordinary citizens were asleep — left unclear whether he was seeking a final bit of leverage for a last-minute deal or was essentially calling an end to the negotiations.
Negotiators in Brussels had been racing the clock — with five emergency meetings in the last 10 days — to reach a deal by the end of the day Tuesday, when the European part of the current bailout program for Greece expires.
- Terrorist Attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait Kill Dozens
The New York Times JUNE 26, 2015
BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a matter of hours and on three different continents, militants carried out attacks on Friday that killed scores of civilians, horrified populations and raised thorny questions about the evolving nature of international terrorism and what can be done to fight it.
On the surface, the attacks appeared to be linked only by timing.
In France, a man stormed an American-owned chemical plant, decapitated one person and apparently tried to blow up the facility. In Tunisia, a gunman drew an assault rifle from a beach umbrella and killed at least 38 people at a seaside resort. And in Kuwait, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque during communal prayers, killing at least 25 Shiite worshipers.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks inTunisia and Kuwait, according to statements on Twitter. But it almost did not matter for terrorism’s global implications whether the three attacks were coordinated. Each in a different way underlined the difficulties of anticipating threats and protecting civilians from small-scale terrorist actions, whether in a mosque, at work or at the beach.
The attacks occurred at a time of fast evolution for the world’s most dangerous terrorist organizations, which continue to find ways to strike and spread their ideology despite more than a decade of costly efforts by the United States and others to kill their leaders and deny them sanctuary.
The United States has killed leaders of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Yemenand elsewhere, but the group has maintained a string of branches and melded itself into local insurgencies. The Islamic State, also known asISIS or ISIL, has worked on two levels, seeking to build its self-declared caliphate on captured territory in Iraq and Syria while inciting attacks abroad.
- Can the Bacteria in Your Gut Explain Your Mood?
The rich array of microbiota in our intestines can tell us more than you might think.
The New York Times JUNE 23, 2015
Eighteen vials were rocking back and forth on a squeaky mechanical device the shape of a butcher scale, and Mark Lyte was beside himself with excitement. ‘‘We actually got some fresh yesterday — freshly frozen,’’ Lyte said to a lab technician. Each vial contained a tiny nugget of monkey feces that were collected at the Harlow primate lab near Madison, Wis., the day before and shipped to Lyte’s lab on the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center campus in Abilene, Tex.
Lyte’s interest was not in the feces per se but in the hidden form of life they harbor. The digestive tube of a monkey, like that of all vertebrates, contains vast quantities of what biologists call gut microbiota. The genetic material of these trillions of microbes, as well as others living elsewhere in and on the body, is collectively known as the microbiome. Taken together, these bacteria can weigh as much as six pounds, and they make up a sort of organ whose functions have only begun to reveal themselves to science. Lyte has spent his career trying to prove that gut microbes communicate with the nervous system using some of the same neurochemicals that relay messages in the brain.
Inside a closet-size room at his lab that afternoon, Lyte hunched over to inspect the vials, whose samples had been spun down in a centrifuge to a radiant, golden broth. Lyte, 60, spoke fast and emphatically. ‘‘You wouldn’t believe what we’re extracting out of poop,’’ he told me. ‘‘We found that the guys here in the gut make neurochemicals. We didn’t know that. Now, if they make this stuff here, does it have an influence there? Guess what? We make the same stuff. Maybe all this communication has an influence on our behavior.’’
- Taiwan Water Park Blast Leaves Hundreds Injured
The New York Times JUNE 27, 2015
HONG KONG — Hundreds of people were injured at a water park in Taiwan on Saturday when a cloud of colored powder exploded in the air over a crowd during a live event, erupting into a huge fireball, the island’s officialCentral News Agency reported
No deaths were reported, but at least 516 people were injured, 194 seriously, including eight with life-threatening injuries, the agency reported. The injured, many suffering burns, were overwhelmingly young, in their teens or 20s or younger, according to a roster posted on the news agency’s website.
Video taken at the scene showed the flames erupting among the crowd at the event, called “Color Play Asia.” People were shown carrying the injured from the scene in inflatable rafts. The explosion happened about 8:30 p.m. local time on Saturday after nightfall, with video capturing people running from the scene, silhouetted by flames. The fire was quickly put under control, but not before hundreds were hurt, the agency said.
“Color Play Asia” bills itself as Asia’s biggest color party, an event where people dance to music while spraying each other with colored powder. A promotional video for the event on its Facebook page shows employees on a stage blasting colored spray onto the crowd.
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